The present invention relates to a robot which operates in accordance with the signal obtained by a sound gathering means such as a microphone.
As a means for determining the operation of a robot, a technique of using the signal input from a microphone is available. As such a robot, a robot is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2003-326479 and 2000-326274, which is designed to perform voice recognition by using the signal input from the microphone placed near a speaker. The signal input from the microphone can also be directly transferred to an apparatus without being processed.
FIG. 15 shows the arrangement of a conventional robot represented by these robots.
This robot includes a robot body 43 comprising movable portions such as a hand 41 and feet 42a and 42b. A microphone 1 which outputs a signal having undergone acoustoelectric conversion is mounted on the robot body 43. The robot body 43 also incorporates a voice recognition circuit 4, control circuit 5, and driving circuit 6. The voice recognition circuit 4 performs voice recognition with respect to the signal output from the microphone 1. The control circuit 5 generates a control signal upon reception of a recognition result from the voice recognition circuit 4. The driving circuit 6 drives movable portions such as the hand 41 and feet 42a and 42b upon reception of the control signals output from the control circuit 5.
As described above, by supplying an output signal from the microphone 1 to the voice recognition circuit 4, the operation of the robot can be determined on the basis of the target signal generated near the microphone 1.
If, however, a signal other than the target signal, i.e., noise, exists at the time of the generation of a target signal, a mixed signal of the target signal and noise is input to the microphone 1. For this reason, it is difficult for the conventional robot to accurately acquire a target signal when noise is present near the robot. As a consequence, for example, the robot does not properly operate.